Called to be Holy
Being a Peculiar People
It is Black History Month in the United States. This month is a challenge and reminder for those of is who live here that our history is complicated. We are a people who have done amazing things and imagined a government that derived its existence, not from a sovereign or even God, but the people within that country (check out the US Constitution). But we are also a country that has done tremendous evil to human beings and those of us who resemble the founders do not like to be reminded of that. This is one reason for Black History Month, but we also set this aside because most of our history is taught from a certain perspective.
I remember hearing the jeers about why we don’t have a White History Month. Those jeers are a perfect example of why we need time to highlight our history in a more full way. I had never heard of the Tulsa Massacre which happened in the twentieth century, nor had I heard of the meaning and purpose of Juneteenth which shows how history education ignores major events because they remind us of the evil we have done.
My own experience helps me to recognize our complex and mixed history. We moved to Tennessee when I was a child and my parents eventually purchased a home and land within a predominately African-American rural neighborhood. Growing up I was exposed to a different culture and experience of our country and world that allowed me to more readily have empathy when I heard he stories of lynchings, segregation, and the Jim Crow laws. The schools I attended had only recently been desegregated and it was only through force from the Federal Government. When I read James Cones' The Cross and the Lynching Tree my own experiences of stories only partially prepared me for the truth of the image of the cross and the lynching tree being connected in metaphorical and ontological ways. I fully embrace Cones' claims of the cross and its paradox of violence and salvation. But it is these words that most haunt me from that book;
Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a “recrucified” black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy. (James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree)
It is a hard truth, but one when embraced we can more fully live into the radical compassion and mercy that God invites us to experience through the self-sacrificial act of the cross. That essential kenosis of a self emptying God invites us to also take up crosses of self-emptying love.
I am an ordained Elder in the Church of the Nazarene and we have always claimed to be for the marginalized. But our history is just as complicated as that of the United States. We have also failed in both spectacular and subtle ways. Yes, we have succeeded in living this out as well, but it is our failures that we should learn from, especially in a culture of polarization and the normalization of racist language and action re-emerging like a bad batch of cicadas. Many of our clergy even accept the ways of the world over the ways of Jesus when engaging ideas like our commitment to being a diverse and worldwide denomination, an inclusive people who welcome the stranger and the marginalized, and our call to help create more equitable societies across the globe. Our Manual’s section called the Covenant of Christian Conduct begins with a long section about how we, as Wesleyan-Holiness people, are to live and our call to be light in a dark world.
28.4. We call our people to proclaim and demonstrate God’s grace and love to the world. Equipping believers for reconciling love as ambassadors for Christ in the world is the shared responsibility of every congregation. God calls us to attitudes, practices of hospitality, and relationships that value all persons. We participate as joyful disciples, engaging with others to create a society that mirrors God’s purposes. Our faith is to work through love. Therefore, the Church is to give herself to the care, feeding, clothing, and shelter of the poor and marginalized. A life of Christian holiness will entail efforts to create a more just and equitable society and world, especially for the poor, the oppressed, and those who cannot speak for themselves. Manual, Church of the Nazarene, 2023
But we are not always good at living this call. We have even had failures to live this as a denomination. There is excellent work being done showing the connection between some of our mid century leaders and the Ku Klux Klan. This is not a sweeping indictment, but one we must face. During a period that many believe to be an almost utopian era of holiness, we had segregated districts in the United States. In the book Called to the Fire Rev. Dr. Charles Johnson shares stories of his life pastoring in Meridian, Mississippi for over fifty years beginning in the 1960’s. One of the mentions that sticks out in those stories is that the Fitkin’s Memorial Church of the Nazarene had to ask a smaller white church permission to spend the tithe money of Fitkin’s. Yes, the law forbade the African-American congregation from having its own bank account, but the denomination could have made it easier for them to spend the money that had to be held by a white smaller congregation.
Dr. Johnson was faced with the possibility that he could be killed at any time simply because of the color of his skin from his very first days in Meridian. He also faced questions about why he would advocate for change which included organizing for civil rights and not focus on pastoring. He had a ready answer to that question. That answer is best explained within the context of his testimony during the trial in Meridian around the infamous Mississippi Burning case of the death of civil rights activists.
Eyeing the witness the counsel persisted in a thick Miss’ippi drawl, “And while you were in Virginia did you take special education or courses or training in order to further the cause that you testified you are so very interested in?”
“Just the ministry.” Johnson wasn’t entirely sure what else the attorney was alluding to.
“Well, ministry and also these things that you told the prosecutor attorney here about this voting proposition, your training, and the upgrading, etc. . . . Did you take special courses and training along those lines?” In Weir’s eyes, and in those of the entire defense, these interests Johnson had served for improving the lives of black people had nothing to do with pastoring a church. To them the preacher had forgotten his place and had begun to meddle in things he ought not to disturb.
“I trained for the ministry,” Reverend Johnson replied. He had attended the Nazarene Bible College in Institute, West Virginia, in response to what he knew was a divine call on his life. God had so shaped his thinking and practice at Bible College that the pastor would rely on this foundation for decades to come.
The lawyer found his swagger again. He slowed his speech and persisted a third time as if to insist there was more to the story. “Well, was that the real purpose that you took the training . . . to learn these things that you are so interested in and come to Mississippi and advocate them?” He subtly offered the courtroom the notion that all this agitation in Mississippi kept coming from outside of the state. An all-white jury might “Amen” at this point. The state had a hard time shaking negative publicity throughout the sixties and even conscientious citizens had grown tired of bad press. As Weir honed in on his subject the jury would make the connection. Schwerner and Goodman were both from New York. This black preacher, trained in West Virginia, came to stir things up, too.
Charles listened carefully. He heard the insinuations. He understood well the mindset that his people had come up against time and again like a brick wall. He thought of his flock, his parishioners’ needs and all the trials and suffering they’d endured long before he ever arrived. Then he clearly and prophetically answered as slowly as he was asked:
“I took my training to help the whole man.”
Bush, Chet. Called to the Fire: A Witness for God in Mississippi; The Story of Dr. Charles Johnson (pp. 21–22). (Function). Kindle Edition.
“[T]o help the whole [person]” is the way of holiness and it goes all the way back throughout Christianity, but for those of us in Wesleyan traditions, we see it within the ministry and teachings of John Wesley who believed that the entire person needed to flourish and that holiness was for the whole person.
In a world in which we find the culture of political discipleship seductive, we can find another way. That is the way of Jesus living in a way that is radically different than the world. This is the way of holiness that rejects the polarization that demands purity of political thought; choosing the way of Jesus that will upset every spectrum of political thought in its insistence on mercy, grace, compassion, love, and carried crosses. To let Cone have the last word;
“The cross is a paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last.” (James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree)